Siemens Energy has signed a deal with Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. to supply solar panels for several projects in Europe.
The deal will be a lucrative one for Suntech, with Siemens having secured orders for solar farms with a combined capacity of over 80 MW in six European countries. Siemens supplies turnkey solutions for large-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants. Recent orders include a photovoltaic plant in Italy with a peak output of 15 megawatts (MW), six solar power plants in France with a combined capacity of 30 megawatts (MW) and a solar farm with a total capacity of 4 megawatts in the Czech Republic.
In other recent Suntech news, the company says it has introduced a second production shift at its new solar panel manufacturing facility in Goodyear, Arizona.
The facility will now operate for up to sixteen hours per day with 78 employees; increasing from eight hours and 40 employees just a few month ago.
Suntech plans to further increase production by the facility to 50MW annually by the middle of this year and has its sights set on employing 150 people by the end of 2011. Looking further ahead, Suntech says it could expand the Arizona plant to produce 100MW of PV modules annually within the next few years.
The facility currently produces 280 watt Suntech solar panels; designed for commercial and utility-scale solar farms.
Across all its manufacturing facilities globally, Suntech says it has supplied over 13,000,000 solar modules to over a thousand customers in over eighty countries.
